Reflex in the sky

[biiowiired]

Who| The Ψiioniic &: Sam Wilson, Samwise Gamgee, Rose Lalonde, Venus Dee Milo.
What| Blindly taking refuge
Where| The Catacombs
When| May 25 - Jun 02
Warnings/Notes| language and lisping always

He woke struggling in the dirt, bruised and burned and completely surprised to be alive. He'd been flying low when something hit him, like a power surge or accident with the mind honey. He thought he was literally toast when light filled his vision and the skin around his eyes burned. His optic blast had been completely involuntary, necessary to channel off whatever energy that had hit him, and that frightened him. He'd also lost consciousness immediately while flying, also frightening. Luckily, he had been zooming below the height of the village buildings, hoping they'd provide cover from any projectile weapons. He supposed flying out of them into the open fields did him in, but he'd had no choice in the chaos of the Cornucopia.

It was dark. Where the hell were the stars? Did the Gamemakers forget to turn them on, or did they just not bother? Screams in the distance told him there was another big fight erupting. Or the same one? He'd lost time between rocketing off from the Cornucopia and here, but he couldn't tell if it was minutes or hours. He'd assumed it was hours, because he was standing and wading through pitch black velvet unlike any dark season, a tattered monk trying to look for his missing shoe, and why weren't his eyes adjusting....

Oh. Shit.

He could feel the silvery warmth of what he recognized as the Earth's sun. It came from one direction more than any other. He turned to it, his only clue. His eyes were no longer bright red and blue, but completely black staring orbs. His vessels were burned in yellow capillary fractals around them. He tried to remember where he was. Lost time was less an issue so much as the need to get away from the sounds of fighting. He didn't chance flying again. It could have been lightning, but he'd been too low for that....

A: Sam Wilson

He could hear the wind whistling ominously in the cracks of a large door. He remembered the funny black building on the long path. He'd been flying somewhat in that direction and must have fallen nearby. Though he longed to put out tendrils of psi to feel his way there, he was afraid the light would draw enemies. He crawled instead, tripping on his robe in a fashion entirely unbefitting Alternia's most powerful psionic mage. His hands finally pawed at the door. He ripped it open and stumbled through.

His efforts to enter stealthily were in vain. In his haste to find a place to hide, he tripped and fell into nothingness. Then a stone corner jabbed against his body, and another, and he realized with a sinking feeling of dread and irritation that he was tumbling down a flight of stairs. Before he could summon his psi and stop, he touched down on the first landing. Horns stinging from bumps, he felt for the next step with his toes. He was still scared of the other Tributes entering and seeing his light-show. Troll instinct told him to get out of the open, out of the possible light, and get down into something like a cave.

B: Samwise Gamgee & (later) Rose Lalonde

The wall's recesses were low enough for him to feel with his hands. He jumped when he brushed the long, knobbed forms of bones. He reassured himself that the bodies were long rotted away, with no chance for infection or undead tendencies. Trolls weren't in the habit of venerating dead bodies, so this sort of place was foreign to him. Still, trolls had their own ghost stories, and someone put bones here for a purpose, probably to scare. A Tribute probably wouldn't want to look at them, would pass them quickly by....

He was slim enough to tuck himself behind one of skeletons, borrowing rags and dust to cover his robes and orange horns. He tried to imagine what he looked like sharing a bed with a skeleton. It wasn't a picture he wanted to dwell on, but death had touched his life from hatching, from his first vision of doom to his first kill. If these bones were indeed real, then it was about time the dead did him a favor.

He was nodding off to sleep when he heard someone open the door at the top of the stairs. He remained still, controlling his breaths even though his bloodpusher was hammering in his chest. It was inevitable that someone would want to explore this odd little building and the catacombs under it. He'd just have to lie low behind his camouflage and wait for them to leave. And if they stayed.... well, there was either an alliance or an optic blast to be had.

Completely independent to the noises on the stairs, he heard someone screech loud and hard enough to echo through the catacombs. Psii tried not to jump, but his twitch dislodged a few bones from his osseous companion. Ribs clattered to the floor. Damn ghosts at it again. He never liked them in his head, and he certainly didn't like them now. His prophetic voices had been their usual clamorous din from the start, but (strangely) none of them were distinct enough to tell him whether the ghosts he heard now were real. He remained in his alcove, hoping his cover wasn't broken.

Comments

[lasttosail]

It's only the most pressing need that drives Sam Gamgee into this place. In fact, he recoils when he opens the door and sees, in the weak sliver of light from the artificial sky, the many stacks of bones, and the damp, moldering stones coated in sticky dust, and the graves with their contents all spilling out on the floor. He thinks, with a sudden, sick plunge of his stomach, of the Barrow-downs back in the Old Forest - of the dreams he still sometimes has, of a sinking grey darkness that feels thick enough to drown in.

It's the distant scream from behind him that sends him darting forward into the dark, though - between the threat of ghosts who like as not aren't there and the threat of the armed Tributes somewhere behind him, he'll take the ghosts, and at least have his face to whatever's outside if they drive him fleeing from this place.

He's quiet as he creeps gingerly down deeper, his mouth twisting in distaste when he feels broken pieces of bones under his bare feet. It doesn't reek of decay, so much - these bones being all too old to rot - but it smells musty, the air thick and unmoving.

And then that screech rings out, echoing through the hallways, bouncing off every wall, growing distant and more distant, and Sam leaps clear out of his skin-- darts forward on instinct, stumbles, falls to his knees with a grunt, hears the hoarse, frightened sound that comes out of his own throat and echoes on the heels of the scream, and then the clatter of bones falling down, not ten feet away--

--But that's queer, ain't it--? Even in his panicked crawl to the nearest wall Sam knows ghosts don't rattle nothing loose, having no hands with which to do it - and he flattens himself against the wall he finds (suddenly hardly caring what skeleton he's pressed up against), his eyes wide and staring and seeing almost nothing in the blackness this far from the still-cracked door.

"Who's there?" he calls out, his voice sharp to disguise the tremble in it. "Who else is creepin' around in here? Whether dead or not-- speak, or you'll have me to tangle with!"

[celebrityskinned]

Venus typically doesn't teleport twice in quick succession, usually because it makes her have to struggle to keep her molecules together, but the Gamemakers have seen fit to punish her for her pride by trying to hit her with lightning, and so she had no choice but to crawls back into the wormhole before she was even fully out of it. The result is that she ends up in the Catacombs (she's been jumping at random, so the only thing that sticks out to her here is just how dark it is) feeling sick and drained and shaking.

She's running low on the supplies to hand out to people, and most of her friends haven't been crossing her path. She takes a seat against a wall, listening to the sounds of the ghosts, the rattles of chains, the way the earth itself seems to exhale down here, with the sort of fearlessness that accompanies complete abandon. And she hears someone else, something that sounds more solid but could be a mutt or a Tribute or even something else.

"Hello?" She squints into the darkness, but there's hardly light at all down here. She's barely better than blind. "Who's there?"

Her voice is light and conversational, as if she were answering a doorbell and not in the midst of a death match.

[wickedgoogly]

It's bit further in the week when Rose comes by. Traveling with Dave has been an exercise in learning to deal with his protective older brother tendencies - new, and frustrating when he was only a day earlier until she arrived - and also in the flow of the arena. Her one day in Sburb was eventful beyond the point of measure, and while this place has its issues and surprises, a lot of it amounts to drudgery and repetition.

That's why, really, she's felt so tempted to sneak off now and then. It's just that there's so many chance to find things out! There was the castle she found earlier, finally hitting it the night of her first day instead of the immediate investigation she'd wanted, and it proved productive when she not only met a real, live wizard - the Merlyn of legend! - but also gained a pair of knitting needles. She couldn't have hoped for better; in fact, she didn't expect that much.

Now, though, it's the ossuary that's drawn her. It seems more dangerous for the dark and the bones, but Rose has never taken grim as the stay away sign so many do. Still, she keeps her needles out as she ventures down the steps.

Of course, it can't be as simple as that. A screech comes from somewhere further in, lighting up her nerves, and a secondary clatter comes from down nearby. She has two choices: leave, or investigate? She's honestly not eager to find what caused the distant screech, but a part of her protests soundly at the idea of not looking around even a little.

So marshaling herself, she strides down the stairs and around to where she heard the clatter. "Show yourself."

It might sound more threatening from anyone but a young teenager in a wizard robe, or even if she had something different than knitting needles to be armed with, but she's confident enough she can defend herself if she has to.

She just hopes it doesn't come to that.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

Sam's not exactly thrilled about being here. It creeps him out, for one, and while he isn't thrilled about using the castle as a home base, either, it's better than this.

But he's in the catacombs anyway, because it'd be stupid to avoid a place just because it gives him the creeps, when there might be something worthwhile in there. And especially when he's still got a handful of people he's looking for. It's early, so he's not too worried that he hasn't seen Bucky or Steve since the Cornucopia - but worried enough that he's here in the creepy ass catacombs just in case.

He's close enough to the stairs that the loud crashing coming from them makes him tense up, fingers tightening around the rusted metal spike he's got as a weapon as he makes his way back towards them. But he relaxes a little when he sees who it is, wariness turning to concern.

"Psiioniic? Shit, man, you okay?"